At this point, I think I’m ready to move on to Final Fantasy V. I’ve been playing this game for so long that I’m itching to get on to something new. It’s actually embarrassing how long it took me to finish this game. I started—get this—on July 14 last year. That’s about ten and half months to finish one game. At this rate, I’m losing ground. They’re making games faster than I can play ‘em.

The good thing, however, is that this last year was exceptionally busy, and this upcoming year looks much more normal. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to make much better time through Final Fantasy V.

I am a bit curious to see what the end game content is like in Final Fantasy IV, but not curious enough to play it now. Over the next few days, I’ll wrap up this game’s results and write a final review. Then it’s off to Final Fantasy V! Finally!

I’d like to make more comments about the ending, but unfortunately the Japanese in the ending came at me pretty fast, and I have to confess, I missed quite a bit of it. Over the past year, I’ve used Japanese less than in previous years, so I’m once again looking at some study time to get my skills brushed up. I also have to admit that I struggled with keeping up with the story’s details, as I took so many breaks in the gameplay over the past year. I’ve forgotten some of the details over that time. In any case, I did glean some information from the long ending, and thought a few comments were appropriate.

After Zeromus falls, Golbez and Cecil reluctantly came to some sort of truce, with Cecil calling him “Brother” in a healing gesture of friendship at the end. Golbez, burdened by guilt, decides to go hibernate with the Moon people, instead of coming back to Earth. It is somewhat funny that Cecil can instantly forgive Kain for betraying him god knows how many times, but struggles to forgive his own brother.

There were a bunch of other little cut scenes that came up later, nearly one for each character, but they key one seems to be where Cecil and Rosa are together. At first I thought they were married, but then I got a sense that they are getting ready to get married, and then we are treated to a final scene at their wedding, where the whole supporting cast returns. I’m not sure on all this, but in any case it seems safe to conclude that Cecil and Rosa hooked up in some manner, and that for them at least the story ends happily.

But in any case, the ending was satisfactory in a Final Fantasy way.

Yes! Finally! Victory! I’m actually not sure if we would have needed the kitchen knife or not, but this time we managed to take Zeromus down!

The fight was still long, but this time I did a much better job of managing my casualties. I focused on using both Rosa and Rydia for healing, and left the damage to Edge, Cecil, and Kain. This worked much better, as I could cast the “Asura” summons from Rydia and all sorts of good things happened, most of which involved healing our party to full strength. This freed up some turns for Rosa, who could use her powerful full resurrect spell to bring back dead members to life with full health. This made a huge difference in our party’s ability to fight.

It was still dicey at times, as at one point we had three members dead, including Rosa, and only a few hundred hit points left on Cecil and Edge. But we managed to get Rosa up, she cast a powerful heal, then things remained stable enough to cast resurrects on Rydia and Kain.

I was getting concerned at the end, however, as both Rosa and Rydia were running out of magic points. Even though the fight was under control, there were several times when we really needed heals from Rosa, and if I had to stop her for even one turn to bolster her dwindling magic points, I’m not sure we would have lived. But just as the lack of magic points was becoming a concern, Edge hit Zeromus with a shot that took him down.

After the victory we are treated to a long and winding wrap up. Following this, our party came back from the Moon to reunite with all the other adventurers. Apparently there is another dungeon that opens up now, and I can switch in other party members, but I’m not quite sure how this all works, because at the end of the game we got messages that the five character classes belonging to the five members of our final party had unlocked something. Not sure what that was.

Status: Done!

I stood there and looked at my party, sitting outside the entrance to the Palace of the Moon. I thought about how much more time it was going to take to get all the way back down to that final battle yet again. I just didn’t have the energy.

One thing that I’ve been wondering during the past two battles with Zeromus is this: What if I hadn’t used the kitchen knife on that black orb? What if I had saved it for the final battle? Standing there looking at my dejected party sitting outside the palace, I decided that I would give the final boss one more shot, but I would revert to a saved game just before my Groundhog Day post. In this game, I still had that kitchen knife. If that didn’t work, then I would come back here and try again with this party.

With that, I flashed back in time to my party just before the fight with the black orb. This time, instead of battling the orb, we turned to the right and headed into the final section of the dungeon. After 45 minutes of fighting down this path (for the fourth time now), we once again stood ready to battle Zeromus, this time with the all-powerful kitchen knife hanging from a belt at Edge’s side.

Status: Ready for One More Try

With our confidence at an all-time low, we hack our way once more through the boss fights over the last few levels of the Moon Palace. As we approach the end, we reverse our path, fight a few more random encounters, then teleport to the surface of the Moon.

I’m going to replenish potions, then head back in for another run to the end. I figure I can gain four to five levels with another run, and I’m hopeful that the increased power will turn the battle in our favor.

Status: Down, but not Out